S3 speaker crackling sound

My S3 is acting up lately, when playing audio, there is occasional crackling sound at the very beginning of playing the sound, the crackle will last for 2-3 seconds before disappear completely and changed to normal clear sound, I must wait for the crackling sound disappear itself or else it will keep repeating (play the song until the crackle stop by itself and replaced with clear sound, but if I change song before the crackle finished it will persist after until the crackling stop by itself), the crackling sound sometimes appear too when playing samsung theme song while restarting, I also notice when testing the phone through *#0*# in receiver testing, after close the receiver test there will be crackling sound too, but the crackling sound come from speaker, not receiver.

Tried factory reset, but no avail, I really wish this is software issue, as in my country there is no replacement for faulty hardware, just free service but it can take up to 2 months before I get my device back.
My S3 running on 4.1.1
Thank you in advance, and sorry for my bad English because English is not my mother language.

Your problem certainly sounds like a hardware issue, but you could check one or two things to be certain:
1. Plug in your headphones and see if the same crackling occurs - if it does, then it's likely in the sound generation chip/circuit. Time for a replacement. If you don't hear the crackling through the headphones then it may be a lousy speaker connection.
2. Does this problem occur at all speaker volumes? Perhaps you're just over driving the speaker?
3. Does the problem occur with all sources? For example, when you're using the speakerphone during a phone call?

It may not be a desirable solution, but you might look into using a bluetooth speaker; or an external speaker using the headphone jack.

I haven't looked at the hardware to see how the speaker is connected, but if there's just a bad connection at the speaker it's possible that re-soldering the connections would fix the problem. That would void your warranty though, and if not done correctly it could lead to other/worse problems.

Hi GSDer,
1. Tried to plug my headphone, No crackling at all
2. this is interesting, tried to set the volume at minimum to maximum, the crackling volume is consistent, its loud in every volume setting
3. it is appearing randomly throughout the device as long as playing sound, whatsapp, music app, ringtone, even button sound, but the strange thing is if we let the crackling sound play until it stops by itself the crackling sound will not appear again until the device is left for a few moments or changing app (crackling sound stopped at button press, but whatsapp will have that crackling sound, vice versa)
Looks like this is very likely a hardware problem.
Thank you for your reply.

After more testing, it seems like the crackling sound appear when the device is cool, after using it for a while and the device warm up, the crackling sound is reduced to "Tok" sound when beginning playing any sound, be it notification, ringtone or music. After leaving the device at cool environment at long period of time the crackling sound is back again, tried to restart and kill all processes as suggested by smooth4lyfe but the result is still the same.
I will try to bring my device to samsung later this week and see how this turn up.
thank you for your reply.

Never touch any liquid substance that I aware of, but even if its wet it should be crackling all the way when the sound is playing right? But mine is only at the very beginning of playing sound for 2-3 seconds before changed to clear and crisp sound. The funny thing is, the cooler the device, the longer that crackling sound would be.
I had enough headache about this problem, got turned in the device to samsung and expect result in 3-4 weeks.
Thank you for all your reply.